Marvel’s Avengers: Skirmish for Wakanda
This is it, the big hail mary for Marvel’s Avengers, The War For Wakanda expansion that features a new character in the incredibly popular Black Panther, a new area to explore in Wakanda, new enemies, and bosses and some revamps to the existing game as well. Is it the savior the game so desperately needs?
On its own I’d say if you weren’t into Marvel’s Avengers before, War for Wakanda isn’t going to magically convince you. For one, rather than a whole new campaign on par with the initial story campaign, the story content is only a few hours long much like the last couple of significant content drops. You can finish it in an afternoon. Also, Marvel’s Avengers is still Marvel’s Avengers; a loot-heavy grindy game where most of the action takes place post-story, and if that kind of stuff either doesn’t appeal to you or what you want from a game starring Earth’s mightiest heroes, again this won’t move the needle any.
However, if you haven’t jumped in yet and want a solid 20ish hour story starring the Avengers this is really solid game and currently is $25 at most places. And if you really enjoy it there is post-game stuff to do.
As for the new character, Black Panther, he definitely is a character that plays super different than the other Avengers. I maintain most of the Avengers manage to feel pretty unique in their playstyles but there is some overlap, Black Panther manages to avoid that by being a character who you can play as sort of a brawler but really is taken advantage of when you not only really develop his buff/debuff abilities, but learning to parry as well. I will say while I had fun with Black Panther he doesn’t super fit my playstyle (at some point soon I will do a ranking of all the Avengers characters) so I doubt he’ll be one of my primaries but I also will have fun maxing out his levels and power as oppossed to certain characters I’m just doing because I feel like I need to.
Wakanda is definitely a really cool new place to check out but some other aspects I did not dig as much. I mentioned the story campaign was brief but it was also kinda frustrating, some areas required you to defend hacking towers from pretty serious amounts of enemies which your A.I. companions are terrible at helping you with and the final battle you only have a few minutes to beat a boss which seemed really arbitrary and unecessary. The new enemies are fine but more annoying than fun due to many of them basically being able to make you almost blind with their sonic attacks.
One new aspect that takes a little getting used to if you’ve played dozens of hours of Marvel’s Avengers but is definitely vastly improved is the new streamlined UI. Lots of simply but beneficial fixes, a much simpler screen and less menus to dig through. It’s just neat.
I’ll have to play some more with the Wakanda biome itself and Black Panther to really see if it keeps me playing long beyond just maxing out his character, but this doesn’t seem like some miracle turnaround many percieve the game to need. I still have fun with it and hope they keep updating (Spider-Man is still supposedly coming later this year) for awhile longer with more consistency but it’s hard to see without at least like an ongoing free trial of some sort (the free weekend recently was the most activity the game has had since launch) how they’ll really turn fortunes around.
Meanwhile,I’ll just be enjoying what’s there while catching up podcasts! That’s all for today, see ya real soon!
